HELSINKI — Chinese satellite maker Spacety has completed multiple rounds of equity financing worth $190 million to scale its vertically integrated satellite manufacturing and data services model.
Changsha-based Spacety announced the $190 million (1.3 billion yuan) funding in a statement April 9, with participants including Liangxi Sci-Tech Innovation Phase II Fund, managed by Bohua Capital, Turing Capital, Puhua Capital, Guoxin Guozheng, and Xiangjiang State Investment, primarily a mix of state-linked industrial funds and domestic venture capital firms.
The company said the financing will support its integrated “build-manage-use” satellite capabilities, focusing on scaling satellite manufacturing, accelerating data service commercialization, and strengthening full-chain integration across its value chain. Spacety also emphasized its alignment with China’s national strategy to build a “space power” and broader efforts to drive self-reliance in space technology.
Spacety manufactures satellite platforms and operates a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remote sensing satellite constellation. The company was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2023 for allegedly providing synthetic aperture radar imagery to Russia’s Wagner Group to support operations in Ukraine.
The financing rounds come despite the U.S. sanctions, which likely constrain access to international capital, with funding instead sourced from Chinese state-linked funds and private equity and venture capital firms.
The development also comes amid growing numbers and sizes of funding rounds for commercial space entities in China, including the launch sector and subsystems such as optical communications.
The central government has designated commercial space as an emerging pillar industry, while other remote sensing players such as Changguang Satellite have expanded plans for constellations, boosting China’s overall Earth observation capacity and, potentially, its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities. Other Chinese satellite manufacturers such as Minospace have also secured relatively large, fresh funding rounds in the past year.
Spacety also initiated an IPO process in January, signing a listing guidance agreement with a securities firm. Minospace also initiated an IPO process in recent months. A number of Chinese launch startups, including Landspace, CAS Space, Galactic Energy and Space Pioneer are also moving towards IPOs, amid changes to eligibility rules for Shanghai’s STAR Market that are easing listing pathways for commercial space firms.
Spacety was founded in 2016 by former employees of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with its core technical team also drawn from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), two giant state-owned space and defense contractors.
